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Subjectivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Norman Malcolm
Norman Malcolm
Affiliation:
King's CollegeLondon
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Extract

In his book The View from Nowhere, Thomas Nagel says that ‘the subjectivity of consciousness is an irreducible feature of reality’ (op. cit., p. 7). He speaks of ‘the essential subjectivity of the mental’ (ibid., p. 17), and of ‘the mind's irreducibly subjective character’ (ibid., p. 28). ‘Mental concepts’, he says, refer to ‘subjective points of view and their modifications’ (ibid., p. 37):

The subjective features of conscious mental processes—as opposed to their physical causes and effects—cannot be captured by the purified form of thought suitable for dealing with the physical world that underlines the appearances. Not only raw feels but also intentional mental states—however objective their content—must be capable of manifesting themselves in subjective form to be in the mind at all (ibid., pp. 15–16).

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 63 , Issue 244 , April 1988 , pp. 147 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1988

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References

1 Nagel, Thomas, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

2 Nagel, Thomas, ‘What is it Like to be a Bat?’, Philosophical Review 83, (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reprinted in Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. I, Block, Ned (ed.) (London: Methuen, 1980)Google Scholar. My page citations refer to this volume of Readings.

3 In her essay, ‘The First Person’, Elizabeth Anscombe argues convincingly that ‘“I” is neither a name nor another kind of expression whose logical role is to make a reference’. Anscombe, G. E. M., Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, Collected Philosophical Papers, Vol II (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), p. 32Google Scholar. I argue in support of Anscombe's position in my essay, ‘Whether “I” is a Referring Expression’, Intention and Intentionality: Essays in Honour of G. E. M. Anscombe, Diamond, Cora and Teichman, Jenny (eds), (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979).Google Scholar